Google’s Vic Gundotra just announced on his Google+ page a host of new Hangouts features meant to “go beyond the status update”. In short, you can now hangout on any post (an invitation will be added to the comments), call any phone number in the world and conference in anyone (free calling to US and Canada, international calling rates are “super, super low”), plus initiate a hangout session from the official Google+ iOS app by tapping the new hangout icon.

The executive also shared an interesting milestone for Hangouts on Air, saying “hundreds of people” whitelisted as part of their trial now have the ability to broadcast their hangouts to the world. “Our goal is to enable this for everyone on the planet”, Gundotra noted. You will also be able to automatically record a Hangouts on Air session and upload it to a private YouTube account for later viewing. These features require a new Google+ app, “coming soon” to the App Store. The official Google blog has more information.

You have to be intrigued by Google’s ambitious attack on Facebook here, in much the same way they are competing with Apple in mobile devices, Microsoft in DesktopOS and Office and Oracle/Microsoft in Enterprise Apps. It feels like if there is a big market in technology, Google is there.